25. Harry Signals to Mars
Chapter 25
Harry Signals to Mars
D inner at the pub went as well as could be expected. Diane began by raising a protracted toast to Stella’s memory during which Harry fidgeted and Amy had to nudge him three times to get him to stop. The table groaned with turkey and all the trimmings. There were berry-red tablecloths with a scattering of sparkling sequins shaped like reindeer and little vases of holly stems in the middle of the tables. Christmas crackers were laid at each place, and the atmosphere was jovial and warm – at other tables there were diners in paper hats and laughter at cracker jokes.
It was only over their table in the corner that the coldness had descended. It suited Diane’s outfit, a formal ice-blue dress with a white collar which made her look like Alice in Wonderland after drinking an Age Me potion. And then Diane spotted the sprouts.
‘Oh, how delicious!’ she trilled, putting a spoonful onto each of the boys plates.
Harry’s stared at the sprouts and Olly stared at Diane.
‘Do I have to?’ he muttered.
‘If you don’t eat your sprouts, you won’t grow up to be big, strong boys,’ she warned Harry and Oliver with a wagging finger. They pushed the sprouts around their plates for a bit, and as soon as Diane left the table to go to the ladies the boys tipped the sprouts back into the serving bowl and hid them under a cover of mashed potato. Amy and Matt pretended not to see what they had done. It could be their secret.
After dinner Diane insisted that she needed to take Oliver down to the Thompsons to watch the King’s speech on the television, and Matt felt he had to go with them. Amy was ready for a break after a morning of Diane, so she and Harry climbed up the hill to the observatory where Harry could use the mobile signal to phone his dad. It was cold and starting to get dark even though it wasn’t even three o’clock. Clouds had rolled in during the morning and the sun had struggled to break through them.
‘Look down there, you can see the farmhouse windows.’ Harry pointed down the valley to the distant lights of the farm.
‘I can see it,’ she agreed.
‘We could do signalling to Mars.’
‘I don’t think anybody would notice; they’ll all be too busy waiting for the King’s speech.’
‘Olly won’t. He didn’t want to go, he wanted to come up here with me, but his granny wouldn’t let him. Let’s signal anyway. I’m going to flash the torch on my phone, and if he sees it, we’ve got a code for the puppies have come. Puppies is swinging the light round like a firework, and it’s two really long flashes for if they’ve arrived.’
‘Go on then. You signal to the farmhouse, but don’t be upset if no-one sees,’ Amy said.
Harry flashed away happily in the fading evening light, though no-one responded. In the end he gave up and decided to ring his dad, while Amy sat peacefully on the bottom step of the stone stairs leading up to the observatory top floor, as Harry chattered away. She didn’t want to eavesdrop. The damp coldness seeped through her new jeans and into her bones. Despite the landlord’s premonition of blizzards, it hadn’t snowed.
She looked down towards Elder Fell Farm below them. Somewhere inside Diane was holding court and no doubt pontificating on every word of the King’s speech. Amy found herself thinking about Diane’s reaction to Amy’s Christmas gift, even though she was trying to block it from her memory. Diane stomping up the stairs and slamming the bedroom door had been a long way from the response she had hoped for. She and Diane, it seemed, would never see eye-to-eye. Hopefully their antipathy wouldn’t prove a stumbling block in her relationship with Matt. She sighed, and pulled her coat more tightly around herself. Perhaps it already was one. Perhaps that was what was bothering Matt.
A simple, family Christmas, that’s all they’d wanted. But families were never simple, were they?
There was a movement on the path coming up the hill from the farm. For one awful moment, it appeared to be a cloaked figure, perhaps the ghostly grey lady whose presence predicted death and disaster. That was all she needed right now, a supernatural portent of doom. She froze, but as the walker got closer, she realised it was just Peter in a long coat. He had two of the dogs at his feet and a stick in his hand.
‘Is everything okay?’ he called to her.
‘Fine. We popped up here so Harry could phone his dad.’
‘Ah. I saw the flashing lights; thought I’d better check it wasn’t an emergency.’
‘He hoped Olly might see and signal back.’
‘I wanted to know if the puppies had come. Have they?’ Harry’s head popped out from behind the building.
‘Not yet. Still waiting. Dad thinks tomorrow, but I think it’ll probably be another couple of days yet.’
‘Are you going up to see the sheep now? Can I come?’
‘Do you want to know a secret?’ Peter said to Harry, who nodded. ‘I’m not doing anything. Didn’t want to watch the King’s speech. I’m not bothered about royalty and such like. Came out to check on the weather – forecast said it might snow today, but it looks like we’ve escaped it in the end. Then I saw your signals and thought I’d come and see what was going on.’
‘I think it’s time we went back. It’s getting dark early today,’ said Amy.
‘We got signalling from a book, didn’t we, Mam?’ Harry chattered to Peter as they walked down the hill together. ‘It’s called Winter Holiday and it’s about these kids doing exploring in the olden days. The lake freezes over, and they all go skating, but we’re not allowed to do that, so me and Olly did the signals instead. Signalling. To. Mars.’ He demonstrated vigorously some of the torch signals he and Oliver had concocted between them.
‘Rings a bell, that book does, from way back.’ The sound of Peter’s stick hitting the ground as they walked provided a counterpoint to his words. ‘Old one, isn’t it? I think we’ve got a copy of that somewhere in the house, up in one of the spare bedrooms. My grandmother and her mother before her used to have all kinds of people come to stay when she rented out rooms in the summer. Kept books for the visitors to read, we did. I’ll see if Mam knows where it’s got to. Never read it meself – we’ve never been a big family for reading, like.’
‘I like stories,’ said Harry. ‘But I like them best when someone else does the reading. There goes Joe. See you at the bottom!’ And he bounced away down the path towards the cottage in pursuit of the dog who loped down the hill ahead of them. The two grownups were able to talk uninterrupted.
‘Your young man looked proper miserable today, mind you,’ Peter said to Amy after a while. ‘Much like you did when I spotted you sat there. You haven’t had a falling out, have you?’
‘We haven’t fallen out but hings are more difficult than we expected.’ She gazed down the valley towards the farmhouse and wondered what Matt was doing right now.
‘It’s that Diane woman, isn’t it? I saw her earlier, wouldn’t leave him alone. Always needling him about Stella this, and Stella that. She’s the other lad’s mam, isn’t she, Stella?’
‘That’s right. Stella was Diane’s daughter. She died last year. We haven’t told Diane about me and Matt being … you know …’ It didn’t used to be so hard to find the words for how she and Matt felt about each other.
‘You’re all sharing that little cottage, and you expect her to believe there’s nothing going on between the two of you? You’re as daft as your mam.’ Peter shook his head. ‘There’s no way she hasn’t noticed.’
‘I wanted Matt to tell her, but he’s … oh, I don’t know. He’d rather not say anything, and Diane’s making it easy for him. She changes the subject, leaves the room, or finds some other excuse not to talk to him.’ She shoved her hands in her pockets though nothing helped to keep out the cold now her gloves were da mp.
‘Stands to reason,’ Peter said simply. ‘If she doesn’t want it to be true, then she’ll do whatever she can to try and stop it being true.’
‘But why wouldn’t she want Matt to be happy?’ Amy looked up at Peter as they reached the flat bottom of the field. Harry was already at the garden gate chattering away to Joe in the distance.
‘Maybe it’s more that she doesn’t want him to be happy without Stella.’ Peter paused to open the narrow footpath gate for the two of them to pass through. ‘And maybe she’s scared that if Matt starts a new relationship with you then it’ll be the end of her ties with him – and with Oliver.’
‘But Matt wouldn’t do that. He knows how much Diane loves Oliver – and how much he loves her.’
Peter leaned over to close the field gate behind them and looped it shut with a bit of binder twine. ‘Ay. Maybe he does know. But does she?’
‘I …’ She paused and bent down to pat Jack, who was waiting for Peter to finish securing the gate. The dog tolerated her touch, but didn’t seem to enjoy it. They were working dogs, not used to fuss from strangers. ‘I think maybe you’re right.’
‘She’s bound to have picked up there’s summat going on, and perhaps it’s better to be kept in the dark than to be told what you don’t want to hear.’ Peter summoned Jack, who moved away from Amy and back to his master’s side as they set off again.
‘There’s something else that bothers me,’ she said, slowly as they fell into step with each other along the lane. ‘Matt’s not been himself lately.’ The last light of the day was dying quickly. The sun, such as it was, had been down for a little while now and Amy wished she had brought one of the big torches from the cottage. She used the one on her phone so that she could see where to put her feet, but Peter didn’t need a torch. It was as if he knew the track by heart.
‘Well, he wouldn’t be himself, would he, with that Diane woman breathing down his neck all the time.’ Peter made everything sound so obvious.
‘I’m worried there’s something else troubling him. Diane said … Diane said something about how he might have given me the wrong idea, because he’s grieving and vulnerable. What if he has? What if things have gone too far too fast and he’s had second thoughts?’ Her voice cracked as she spoke. She was glad that the dim light hid her expression from him.
‘Do you really think that?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I don’t. I’ve seen the pair of you together. I’m not saying I’m no expert, but I know what love looks like, and I know what I’ve seen. And that Diane is an interfering old crow if she wants to try and come between the pair of you, so don’t pay her any heed.’ He slashed at a bit of bracken beside the path with his stick.
‘I know there’s something wrong and he won’t tell me what.’
‘Just give him time. Men don’t like to talk about stuff as much as women do.’
‘Some men do!’ She thought of James who, when they had argued, never stopped talking for long enough to give her time to consider what he had said and respond. Resounding assertion after assertion after assertion, all driven home with an emphatic hand gesture, left her own arguments gasping for air as they shrivelled away to nothing. Perhaps it was why he was so successful in court. He was a great talker.
‘Maybe some do, but your Matt doesn’t, and I never did. Used to drive your mam mad, sometimes. Eh, she was a big one for talking her way round a problem, but I never was. I’d rather have some peace and quiet to sort out the answer first and then talk about it, not the other way round. She used to tell me to talk to her about my feelings, but how could I tell her what I felt until I’d had a chance to work it out for myself?’
They were nearly back at the cottage now and Harry was in the garden waiting for them to catch up with him.
‘I get that from our dad, I guess,’ Peter continued. ‘Dad’s a big one for taking time off on his own to sort things through in his head. Always know when he’s got some big decisions to make ‘cos he disappears off for hours up onto the fells by himself. He’s a listener and thinker and a doer, not a talker. I don’t know your Matt that well, but I think he’s more of a listener too.’ They stopped outside the garden gate. ‘If he’s still at ours when I get back, perhaps I could have a word with him for you.’ He nodded in the direction of the farmhouse.
‘Would you?’
He opened the garden gate for her. ‘Ay. I’ll give it a try if you want. Though I’m sure if it’s important he’ll tell you in his own good time, when he’s found a way through it, whatever it is. Probably when that Diane woman’s out of the way. Nothing worse than a mother-in-law, or at least so I’m led to believe.’
Once she’d stepped through the gate and closed it gently behind her he leaned on the other side. It looked ancient and she had closed it delicately in case she damaged it, but Peter was confident it was still solid enough to take his weight.
‘And she’d not even my mother-in-law, she’s Matt’s,’ Amy added.
‘Even worse, then. ’
‘At least she’s going home tomorrow. And I thought perhaps we’ll be able to go up to the tarn with Mam’s ashes after she’s gone if you’d like to join me?’
‘Hurry up mam!’ Harry was waiting in the porch. ‘I’m cold!’
‘Ay, I’d like to come. But I wouldn’t make no plans for tomorrow. Not for that Diane setting off home, nor for going up to the tarn neither.’ He looked upwards.
Beyond Gunner’s Pike heavy clouds were beginning to form.